The Green Place
by seriousish
Summary: After a war, warriors only want to go home. Even if they have to make one first.
1. Prologue

It started in the hold of the war rig.

Max was driving, Furiosa trusting him not to kill them but still not enough to be around the girls. He had given her one of his commandeered guns and she'd checked it five times. It would fire.

Max didn't mind her protectiveness. He saw how it was. Mentally, the Wives were still back at the Citadel—no freedom, no celebration, not when pursuit was so close. They needed someone whose strength they knew. Trusted. They needed bedrock.

Furiosa? She was what was _beneath_ bedrock.

Cheedo was the most scared. She'd been close to Angharad, and losing her had shaken all her courage loose. It would take her time to find it again, but it was somewhere out there. She'd left with them, after all.

For now, Furiosa took hold of her, rocking her gently, trying to provide a counterpoint to the noise and fury of the war rig. They weren't used to it, and the only thing about it that didn't scare them was that it wasn't home.

Finally, the little wheedling sounds of Cheedo's fear faded. Asleep. Furiosa hoped she was dreaming of Angharad, and not her death.

Toast offered herself up next, as Furiosa shifted Cheedo down onto her lap. Toast sat sweetly beside Furiosa, smiled nervously, then laid her head on Furiosa's shoulder. Her good one. The Imperator put her arm around Toast, not knowing quite how she knew what to do—more used to getting a read on predators like Max than knowing prey like the Wives.

But something inside… a long-dead memory of the Vuvalini, like a half-remembered childhood lullaby… compelled her to rub her hand on the dark skin of Toast's arm. Unlike most, she had been born looking sun-bronzed—one of Joe's exotics. Furiosa half-expected her to be warm to the touch, at least warmer than the others, but she was chill and cool, nervous sweat just waiting to pour from her. As she relaxed, Furiosa rubbed the proper warmth into her.

Toast gestured to Capable, who was half-watching and half-looking away, but more than half-saw the beckoning. She went over, laying down beside the sleeping Cheedo with her head on Furiosa's thigh, looking at her friend. Furiosa didn't know if she wanted reassurance or to protect her. Probably both.

The Dag came last. Moved between Furiosa's spread legs, put her back to Furiosa's front, settled down to sleep with her arms around her fetal legs. Toast reached over, patted her. Capable reached over, patted her. The slender muscles of her arms flexed as she tightened them around her shins. Her head bowed and Furiosa saw the brand of the Immortan, blaring from the back of her neck.

Toast reached over and played Dag's hair back behind her head, covering it. "I should grow my hair long too," she said gently.

"Go to sleep, Knowing," Dag replied.

Furiosa was careful to position herself so she didn't touch the Dag in her sleep. She got it. The Dag wasn't like the others. Didn't want to be comforted. Just wanted to be close. Furiosa guessed she would've been the same way, her age, if she'd had anyone to be close to.

Before she'd left, she'd planned what she would need, what she could take—how she could hurt Joe. She hadn't taken any of the bloodbags or war pups, but that wasn't the reason. The Wives were about the only thing left delicate for a thousand miles—might as well be the whole world. Even Joe knew their value; though he would crush them trying to have their delicacy on his terms.

Furiosa, she knew better. They had to be saved because they were proof the whole world had been gentle, once, or at least it could've been. And as annoying as they could be, she was glad they weren't like her.

And she was glad she was enough like them to be a comfort.


	2. Chapter 2

She checked for Max after they took the Citadel. Half expected him to gone somewhere, curling up to die like an old dog. Half expected he'd never die. Her scouts looked for him, but didn't find smeg. It wasn't until he'd come back through the gates that she saw him again. A couple camels he'd tied together, pulling what was left of his Interceptor. Mounted on another car's sheared suspension until he could put real wheels on it.

Inside the complex, he undid all the bridles, seemed to set the animals to wandering without a care. Some of the scavengers pressed in on them, looking to Max for not exactly permission, but a sign he would defend if they tried to take them. A sign that they could beat him if he defended. A sign that the camels were even edible…

Furiosa had arrived by then. Max was trying to gesture a certain pantomime—'take them, they're yours'—but charity didn't translate very well. Furiosa took over. The camels would be added to the livestock; too valuable to slaughter just yet. But double rations for everyone, in celebration of Max's return. They could afford it, with eight new pack animals on the roster. Furiosa doubted anyone would come asking for them back.

"We can fix up your rig in the engine bay," she told Max. Helping him push it the rest of the way to the lift.

"I'll fix it. Can be fixed…" He made it a question with a sort of shrug.

"Good to have you around."

He went "Hmmm" and examined the wreckage again, like he hadn't done that every half-minute he'd been out there. Furiosa didn't like the looks of it. There was a lot that could be salvaged, but sometimes, you just had to drop the casualty. Start from scratch.

* * *

They'd burned a lot of Immortan Joe's things, taking over his space in the Citadel, trying to drive out the spirit of him. Furiosa had played schoolmarm, trying to make sure the Wives weren't amputating good meat with bad—they could always place things in the Vault, give it away. There was precious little of the Old left; she didn't want Joe to take it with him, like it'd _belonged_ to him, like he owned it.

But as soft as his bed was, there was no argument. They burned it. Threw the twisted frame off the side of the cliff. Let it end up as mangled and broken as he had been.

Cushions, blankets, that was all the new bed amounted to. A part of the hard rock that was softer than the rest. Furiosa was used to it, used to worse. The Wives weren't. But they made themselves used to it. Brought their own blankets, their own pillows, and laid close to Furiosa. Cheedo in the Dag's arms, Capable facing the door, Toast with her head on Furiosa's arm. Not a bed, just a bunch of sleeping bags and none of them with the sense to want any space.

But it was warm. Even when the night got its coldest. At least, it was after Furiosa saw the knives they slept with. Capable even had a gun under her pillow. Empty. Still threatening.

She hated it, but the Wives would die before they went back to the way things had been. And certainly before they let anyone hurt her.

* * *

"Lost cause," Max said. He tried to slam the V8's hood down, but it had taken so much budging to get it open in the first place that it stayed wrenched in place. Then he looked over at the tools he'd assembled, the spare parts, and shook his head. "Good money after bad."

"What's 'money'?" Furiosa asked.

He looked at her for a moment before giving her a never-mind shake of the head. He looked better for being in the Citadel—maybe just being free. He'd eaten, hydrated, hadn't slept—she'd gone to bed with the sound of his would-be repairs echoing through the caves. But his eyes lingered instead of darting. His voice was oiled when it came out of him, instead of creaking.

"You're welcome to any of the fleet." She had brought a wheel. Known the diagnosis while the exam was still being given. She handed it over and Max snatched it from her on habit before giving her an apologetic look.

He clutched the wheel to his chest. "Yes." He tried to remember the word. "Thanks." Then he looked at her. Furiosa inclined her head. She could see him reaching for words and usually they sprung up for when he said what needed to be said. "Your Vuvalini… they're staying?"

"Yes. Everyone's welcome." That was as overt as she could be. Talking with Max often felt like holding out food to a wolf. Maybe if you were too insistent, he'd think you were offering the hand as well.

Max nodded, a grumbling sound in his throat. "They weren't out there too long."

* * *

He left shortly after. The Wives were curious about his V8, picking over it—the War Boys had emptied it out little before the chase, and he'd taken even less from it before leaving. Most of the utilities were smashed up. But there were little bits of him… things to be mended when he got the time, memories untainted enough to travel with him. Puzzle pieces they put in a room and left for him. It wasn't like there was a lack of vacancies, after the canyon.

The car Capable fell in love with. She thought it looked pretty—banged up, but not something of the Citadel's. That'd all been scraped away by the desert. The wheels Max had put on it were good, the suspension stable… everything else was the problem. But between the four of them, they could push it. Furiosa joined in: she wouldn't let the Dag do it, with her potbelly standing out even from her well-fed frame.

They got it into Joe's room, Furiosa's room, one more bit of _them_ instead of _him._ The hardtop had gone off in one of its crashes and the hood hadn't made the trip, but they emptied the interior of everything but the dials and the trunk too—Capable said it would make a good crib, she had a _vision—_ and they filled their empty shell with blankets, with cushions, until it was a nest, big enough for all of them.

Furiosa supposed it was her own fault for letting them sleep alongside her this long. Anyway, it wasn't a bad bed. Unlike a lot of things around the Citadel, it smelled of sanity instead of craziness and hatred. Furiosa laid her head beside the gas pedal and tried to forgive the Wives for all squeezing in beside her instead of wanting to use the passenger footspace. Capable said that if they pulled out the scrap metal from the engine compartment, they'd have even more space. Someone could sleep in front of Furiosa as well as behind her.

She didn't know what they wanted from her. How much more safe could she make this place? When would they not want to protect her from it?

* * *

Furiosa tried hard not to tear the paper again. She was holding it down with her new arm, the palimpsest of a magazine article, writing out messages to Bartertown to the south. Oiltown was hers, the Bullet Farm was hers—she told herself she wouldn't, but she wished Max were here. Even Nux. She needed someone she could trust on those installations, and the Many Mothers were stretched thin.

So she tried to create trade. They had gas, they had water, they had plants—even bullets, though Furiosa didn't want to put more of those into the world. She wasn't naïve enough to close the mine down, but she'd freed the miners, ramped down production to a minimum, a safe level. They had more than enough anti-seed already.

But who wanted to trade with the Citadel? Especially now that it'd become a game: king of the hill. Why risk pissing off whoever pushed her off the top? But someone had to take the deal. Build on it. The world couldn't just be a bunch of vultures, eating each other's corpses as one after the other dropped away.

They had to make something new.

The paper ripped. Furiosa sighed, adjusted her bad-arm—lucky the mechers had studied the original enough times to come up with a substitute. It still didn't feel broken in enough; mechanisms weren't worn smooth like the old one had been. It was _too_ responsive. Twitched with her body when she didn't want it too. She kept writing.

She sniffed. Something smelled good. Better than the caves' usual scent of crazy, possessiveness, death. She had a thought of Joe finally fading, then looked around to see Toast approaching her, tray in hand. Water and a bowl of stew. A spoon.

"Didn't see you at dinner. Cheedo missed you."

"That why she made me the soup?" Furiosa joked, knowing that Toast would pout and say—

"No, I made you the soup because I love you more." Quick and teasing, but too quick just to be claiming credit. Furiosa took the bowl, tried it. Warm but not hot. Tasty. Noodles and meat cubes. "You should come to dinner."

"The other settlements should trade with us. The Buzzards should stop testing our defenses. The…" She gestured with her open hand, then turned it into a curt slap of the back of her hand against the desk. "The world should've saved some of its goodness for now, when we need every bit of it. You know they used to have these… water things that would keep your feet soft? Mama Plant told me…"

"The soup's good, isn't it?" Quick and teasing again, but Toast could never convince Furiosa that she didn't _care._ Maybe because Furiosa wanted her to.

"The soup's fine."

"You should come to dinner. Next time, the girls'll send someone else to fetch you—"

"Toast, I _can't._ This place is like a rig. It's either running or it's rusting. I have to keep people fed, keep them watered, and the seeds haven't grown yet—"

"Joe kept it running." Quiet now. "Can't you just do what he did? But nice-like?"

"Keep the scavs in line? Kick them off the lift? Shoot 'em for not going hungry?" Her bad-arm was flexing. Too damn responsive. "The moment we're that bad, we don't get any better."

"You're nothing like him."

"What I'm trying to prove," Furiosa replied simply.

Toast leaned in. The kiss she put on Furiosa's cheek was like a comet: lips there and then gone. She lingered close to Furiosa's face, as close as she got when they slept. "You'll come to dinner when you're done?"

"I won't be done for a while."

"But you'll come?"

Furiosa nodded. And when she'd figured out a message to send that maybe wouldn't start a war, either by presenting themselves as insultingly strong or temptingly weak, she let the hawkers deliver it, went to the kitchen. Everyone had eaten, but the Wives were still there. Doing the dishes while they waited. Furiosa helped them, scrubbing the hubcaps and broken knives that they ate with.

* * *

A family of refugees streamed in one morning. Furiosa's jaw tightened, thinking of more mouths to feed, more throats to wet, but they said a man named Max had sent them. Told them this was a safe place.

The grandfather had been a farmer.

* * *

That night, Furiosa went to bed early. Nothing to do but wait now. Either Bartertown would take the deal or they wouldn't. She found an empty bed. Fine. Probably past time the Wives found somewhere else to sleep. Got one of the nicer War Boys, Imperators, _someone._ She unlimbered her bad-arm from herself, stripped, quickly scrubbed with a sponge and bowl of day-old water. If the Wives came back, they wouldn't want their bed smelling of sweat and dirt. Then she took a flick-knife in hand and relaxed against the Interceptor's central console. Alone.

Distantly, the doors opened. She had good men on guard duty; friends from her Imperator days. But then, she hadn't really had any friends. She flicked the knife out. The blade shiny and chrome, and she hoped thoughts like that weren't where the grammar had come from, Joe sleeping in a bed like this, thinking thoughts like this…

It was Toast the Knowing. In the dark, it took Furiosa a moment to recognize her, she'd changed so much. Her hair grown out into delicate dreadlocks that trickled down her dress. A burgundy dress that covered her from the waist down, with swaths of red and blue fabric that covered her breasts as well. She stood straighter. She walked with a swagger, no longer fearing anyone's eyes but inviting them. At least, she was when Furiosa looked.

"Where are the others?" Furiosa asked.

"I wanted us to be alone. They did too." She undressed. Her breasts were perfect, proud and supple, and Furiosa hated the treacherous heat in her body. She hadn't felt it before, on the rig, just a desire to keep all of them safe. Now she wanted more and it wasn't _hers._

"You always wear too much," Toast continued. "It's not your clothes' job to keep you warm, not at night. It's ours."

She moved in. Pulling aside Furiosa's sheets. Taking away what Furiosa wore as pajamas: a man's jacket, too-large pants, one big layer for her to wrap herself in.

"Stop," Furiosa said softly, backing away as Toast slipped beside her. Perfect and beautiful and pure and innocent—she belonged with the other Wives, people like her. Furiosa belonged not among them, but between them and the people who were even worse. "You're not my property. You're not one of my things."

"Do I have to be?" Toast asked, and her voice was perfect too. Love and warmth and softness. "To be with you?"

Furiosa was firm. "You owe me nothing. Your body is your own."

Toast smiled at her, eyes warm and tender, lips teasing the pucker of a kiss. "I choose who I share it with?"

Furiosa nodded seriously.

"I've chosen," Toast said, and she was getting closer, and closer. Furiosa hadn't known someone could be that close to her. Like maybe there'd been some wall around her she couldn't see. But Toast's skin touched hers: some, then more, then all. Her legs around Furiosa's, her arms around her back, her gaze on Furiosa's hesitance. Her lips on Furiosa's lips.

"You're going to want to be gentle with me," Toast said. Furiosa thought it was good she was so much better at talking. "Soft. I like that. Do you want me to be soft too?"

"Yes," Furiosa said, not sure she'd made the decision until she'd made it. "I want… I want to know how to please you."

Toast petted her head. Furiosa's hair was coming in too. She still cut it short. She didn't know how long she wanted it. When she wouldn't have to worry about someone grabbing it, throwing her around by it.

"Just kiss me," Toast said. "You know how to kiss, don't you?"

She remembered her mother kissing the top of her head, lips blunted by a full head of hair she'd never had since. This wasn't like that. Only it was. She kissed Toast's cheek, as Toast herself had shown her, and Toast giggled and touched her more.

There were places Furiosa liked being touched—she vaguely knew of them, how they responded to her hands when she was able to wash herself, how ugly they felt when they drew a War Boy's eye. Toast's touch didn't linger. It was just quick enough to make them feel beautiful.

"Like this," Toast said, and showed her how their lips could merge, how their tongues could dance together, how it could stop and start again and never stop. Living and dying and living again; the only death and rebirth Furiosa needed.

"And this," Toast said, and her breast tasted as good as it looked, fit to Furiosa's mouth perfectly once Toast showed her how they connected. And Furiosa realized she was doing more than protecting—she was giving Toast something worth being defended. This must've been how people mated in the Old.

"And here," Toast said, robbing Furiosa of her lips and her breast, but giving her the place between her legs; shocking pink in all her sweet darkness. Furiosa spend long minutes there, in the furnace of Toast's need, just kissing her. Her soft hand found Furiosa's callused one, squeezing it with stroking thumb so Furiosa knew she wasn't hurting her, no matter how loudly she cried out.

Finally, Toast was too tender and raw to do anything but climax. Her soft hands pushed at Furiosa's head, skating across her shorn scalp, and Furiosa thought with wet lips of what it would be like to have hair long like Cheedo's or the Dag's. Long enough for Toast to catch between her lips, as Furiosa did with one of Toast's dreads, coming back up to join Toast in an embrace.

Toast saw Furiosa's hesitance, still, her eyes darting over Toast's body as if checking for damage. Like she could've scarred it with her kisses. "That was wonderful," she assured Furiosa.

Furiosa nodded—not anywhere near as sure as she'd been before.

"Would you like me to do that for you?" Toast asked.

Furiosa started to nod, stopped. "If you'd like to."

"It's all I want."


	3. Chapter 3

Max came in on a horse, a body slung over the saddle. Seeing his return, Furiosa wondered if he'd become a bounty man—one of those who'd Joe used to get back his Wives when they fled, back when he hadn't expected them to be ungrateful. Back when they'd been Mary, Alice, Sue. But no, when Max dismounted, guards offering the greeting of water and food like he was a stray dog, he took them to the boy on the saddle.

He had the beauty of a trophy and the mien of a used thing. The golden youth, his body too thin for muscle, too pampered for scars. No bruises, no cuts, but only because he had long ago learned not to fight back. He reminded Furiosa of the girls—how they convinced her to help just from the being of them. He wasn't crying, like Capable had, at first. No, he cried without tears or sound or shakes, like Angharad had with her belly bulging.

"I couldn't leave him with the Rock Riders," Max said. Furiosa hadn't asked.

His beard was coming back, growing out like the spikes on a Buzzard wheeler. His hair covered the nape of his neck. After he'd gotten out of his car, Max had gathered up a fist of it, sawed the excess off with his blade.

Since he'd last been there, the lean-tos the Wretches used for shelter had been replaced with basalt rock domes, a field of them surrounding the Citadel like some weird crop. Sod cladding on metal-worked frames. Bits of debris from all Joe's war. But far too many of the humpies were still made of kerosene tins, bags, corrugated iron sheeting, bark from the few trees they had growing up in the green. Never enough for everyone. Never enough.

"We'll take him," Furiosa said, though he hadn't asked. But she didn't bother to ask if he was staying. "Take some guzzoline with you when you go."

"I don't need it."

"Then trade it for whatever you want."

Max's words had a way of haunting Furiosa. What he said next would haunt her a long time. "There's nothing out there I want."

He sounded relieved.

* * *

Furiosa always felt a trace of guilt, going from the fiery outside to the chilly climate inside the Citadel, or even the humidity of the War Boys' keeping, with the pump of the water all around like she was inside some great ripe heart. She clung to herself in the girls' domain, her bad-arm throbbing with the chill that got into its metal, the leather of its mount shielding her, making her stump numb, but when she crossed her arms, it burned cold on her real arm, across her breasts.

She went to visit Toast—the encounter with the golden youth, who still had not spoken or even given his name, had made her feel once more… yearning, almost. Wishing she could do more to comfort Toast, all of them, to blot out the past.

Toast was fine, of course. All of them, more resilient than they looked, wandering the cold stone with their linen-wrapped feet, a back and forth as they hassled the Dag to do the exercises Angharad had showed them, to prepare for the baby almost-made in her belly to slip free. They threatened to tell the Many Mothers on her if she didn't stretch and breathe and preen as she was meant to, promised her their cocoa rations if she would go through with it. The Dag gave in, probably only so she could whine more, looking to Furiosa for sympathy that Furiosa wouldn't give.

Toast caught her watching as the others breathed with Dag, showing her how to carry the weight in her ("I know how to breathe, slaggers!" she protested fiercely.). She went over to join Furiosa, in an alcove that let in the sun and gave her a welcome glaze of sweat.

"Greatest show on Earth," she joked, nodding her head to the Dag mockingly repeating Cheedo's attentive words to her.

"She's sure she wants to keep it?"

"Angharad would've kept hers," Toast said simply. "It's not his. It's all of ours."

"Anything I can do…"

"We know. You'll die before you'll let anyone put us back to clay— _make something_ out of us or our new's." Toast smiled. Furiosa was still getting used to the girls doing that. "You kinda already did, remember."

Furiosa unconsciously touched the little place on her arm where Max's blood had gone in. Where not being metal had saved her. "We haven't really talked about that night."

"We did all our talking when you touched me."

Furiosa nodded. She wished this could come as easily to her as it did to Toast—even Nux and Capable had seemed to be able to feel it out. All she knew was that she'd made Toast happy, felt like she was protecting her even when there was no threat. "I liked what we did."

"You said that," Toast grinned.

"But it still doesn't mean you're mine. No matter how much I appreciate… whatever you choose to give."

"You're not like _them."_ Toast inclined her head to the burning sun, the desert, where Joe was buried, where others like him had gone before and more would come. "If you were, I would never offer."

Furiosa nodded. Uncomfortable. Unsure if she'd been able to articulate any of the things that were bone-deep in her, not knowing if she'd gotten them out of her, put them where Toast needed them. If Toast needed them at all.

"I like talking to you," Toast said suddenly. "If you're wondering what I want from you, it's that you keep coming here and telling me… whatever. We know a lot about this place. We can help."

" ** _I AM PULLING OXYGEN INTO MY LUNGS AND THERE IS CARBON DIOXIDE COMING OUT, HOW AM I DOING THAT WRONG!?"_** the Dag demanded, all the other girls shrinking back from her.

"She seems to have breathing down to a science," Furiosa said wryly.

"A natural," Toast agreed. "Do you need to go?"

"Some things I should check on. Didn't know you would want me this long." That hadn't come out right. That dizzying sense of black smoke coming from under her hood.

"As long as you want to be here," Toast countered. "But I think you have better things to do than watch us tend the green. Although I think you are the only one who could get the Dag to help out…"

"In her condition?"

"She's just supposed to learn the makings of the stuff with the rest of us—what the seeds need—but damn if she won't slip off into her own little world. And we all supposed to carry the knowledge when the Vuvalini are gone…"

Furiosa nodded, a little depressed—one more thing to worry about. She'd come to rely on the Vuvalini, and already them older than anyone in the Citadel, except maybe Joe, and he'd had the clean air. She put her hand on Toast's shoulder, let her feel the weight of it, then left. Moments later, before she had even started to feel the heat of the endlessly circulating pumps radiating from the walls, Capable ran to catch up to her.

"Furiosa! Furiosa!"

She turned back. Capable was running after her, her red hair grown out into an open flame, plaited down the small of her back. In motion, it whipped behind her like a tail. When Furiosa visited, sometimes she found the girls braiding it together, all playing with it, the crimson hair no one else had. Joe had liked it short.

"You're cold, right?" Capable brushed a stray lock out of her face. She'd stopped wearing the goggles—they'd used to be a kind of hairband. "The others don't see it—who's ever cold here? But you have goosebumps."

"A little bit," Furiosa admitted, uncomfortable with her concern. "It's nothing."

Capable had in her arms a little bundle. She unrolled, forming a shawl made of the same pure white linen the girls had all used for their clothing—now dirtied, battle-scarred from the trip in the War Rig. "We made you this. It's not too heavy… put it on."

Furiosa tried it on. It was light, a cloak she could bundle around herself, with a hood she could draw up over her ears. No sleeves. It had been cut away at one side, so it wouldn't catch on her bad-arm, and there was beaded little clasp she could do up across her neck to hold it in place. Furiosa smiled. It really was kind of clever. And enough to keep her warm with the sunlight far away, in the bowels of the Citadel where there was only cool air circulating.

"It's lovely," Furiosa said.

Capable nodded. "You're worried though."

Furiosa let out the sigh she was holding in. Maybe they were a sinking ship, Max just the only one smart enough to get himself a lifeboat while there was still time. "I miss the rig sometimes. Driving somewhere… even with people coming after us, at least they were behind us."

Capable leaned in and kissed her, tugging the shawl tightly around Furiosa so all she felt was warmth.

Furiosa would've been less surprised if Capable had pulled out a gun and shot her in the head.

"If you want to be cheered up," Capable said against her mouth, "no one's sleeping in the Big Bed right now. We could have it all to ourselves."

"Maybe later," Furiosa said numbly.

Capable nodded, a look of disappointment on her face—the cutest look of disappointment—and she went back to tend to the Dag, tend the fields.

Furiosa wondered which of them was supposed to be in control, when Capable had just made Furiosa want her so badly…

* * *

She laid awake in the bed, the sheets around her feeling like the shawl, Capable's clothing as she pressed their bodies together. She still didn't know. The girls were warm, affectionate. The kiss could've just been a kiss. The offer as simple as a massage, a snuggle. Odd, but everything about the girls struck her as odd. Everything of them was delicate and tender. One of them being tender towards her was just how they were. It didn't mean Capable yearned for her. Toast did already, and that was strange enough on its own.

Then the door opened and she was back in that night with Toast—that wonderful night—only this was Capable. Her clothes now were less intricate than ever, easy to remove, simple sheaths for her body. A skirt. A top. Her red hair unbound, Capable nervously playing with a loop of it as the door shut behind her. The darkness. The moonlight.

Furiosa felt wrapped around her finger, the way her heart rushed, the way her sweat ran—because Capable wanted it to.

"You're not my property," Furiosa said. "Not mine to be told what to do."

"Knowing said you'd say that." Her smile. It was so sweet. So sweet, it could only be in a world without Joe, without the War Boys—without the desert or sun or bullets, how could it be _here?_ "She said I could still be yours. If I wanted to be."

She kept coming closer. Furiosa kept seeing more of her. And kept wanting to see still more.

"Toast and I are…" Furiosa bit her lip. Didn't know how to explain. She only had half of it, Toast had the other half. "I don't want to dishonor her."

Capable laughed, sitting at the foot of what passed for a bed, all moonlight and soft, supple dark. "I didn't even think you'd mind. But of course you would. You'd think even of her feelings, as well as her body. Furiosa, we share _everything._ We only had each other and still we're all we want. We're everything to each other. I don't have… strength or hope or support or pleasure. It's all in them. And some part of it's in me. And I want it to be in you, too. Like it was with Toast. We all love you. We all want your happiness to be in us."

"I don't know if I have any happiness for you to hold," Furiosa said honestly. Too honestly; she looked up at Capable to see if she'd hurt her.

Still, Capable smiled. Moonlight. "Let me look for it."

She pampered Furiosa, making herself the woman's servant, her slave. She wanted nothing more than to please Furiosa—her sheer _need_ to satisfy Furiosa was daunting. She spent long minutes just _preparing_ Furiosa. Slow kisses that stretched into each other, gently ending, gently beginning again, leaving Furiosa's lips wet and warm and swollen as she turned to Furiosa's neck. Adding her own mark to the faint one that Toast had left with teeth and suction. She undressed Furiosa, every shed article of clothing an excuse to return to Furiosa's lips with one more kiss, to keep Furiosa on the verge of frenzy. When she was bare, Capable looked at her like the sight was all the satisfaction she needed.

She moved lower—a slow, sweeping perusal of Furiosa's body, lavishing attention on her breasts, her tummy, the tops of her thighs. Evocative nips of teeth and tongue at Furiosa's labia, not penetrating her, not licking her, but making her want it even more than she already did, making Furiosa's body _need_ with a fierce hunger that the Imperator hadn't known she was capable of. She wettened, her body surging into Capable's touch, an arm across Furiosa's belly and she realized she was being held down. Furiosa would allow it as long as she could. Those elongated kisses, outside her sex, upon it, slow suction and quick brushes of those wicked lips… wetter… she was drowning, drowning from the inside. Capable tasting her with slow, kitten lapping.

"This was Toast's scent when you were done," Capable said with a kind of wonderment, like she was leaving the Vault again, seeing the outside world in all its crazed splendor. "We all kissed her… we were so happy for her, but we all wished it was us. We just weren't brave enough for you to reject us. But Toast wasn't afraid. She knew. Toast the Knowing…"

Supple licks that went on and on, just enough strength to _part_ Furiosa, to let Capable in, but still so gentle, so tender. She felt tasted. She felt shared. Capable drew an orgasm out of her by painstaking degree—Furiosa blinked away tears when it was over, but it wasn't over. She had the experience of being _played,_ like a pipe or the taut strings the Vuvalini made music on. Capable stayed with her through everything, her tongue never quickening, never tiring, Furiosa's climax ebbing and flowing and ringing, but never ending and never beginning. She sighed and she moaned and it was music.

Then Capable turned her over, Furiosa feeling absurdly embarrassed of her bare rump being seen, touched, but Capable kept feeling it, plying it, spreading and massaging her cheeks, then kissing, then licking, endless circuits along the flatness of her ass, then the rounded inner curve, then hands parting her, tongue _in between._ Capable showed her that she could feel the same pleasure somewhere else, with its own excitement and its own intensity. The gentle song continued, overture, build… crescendo.

By then, the nagging guilt of feeling all this pleasure and knowing how little Capable was having grew to being unbearable. Furiosa stopped her—relief cool and sweet—but Capable still wanted her, hands pressed together, begging. Furiosa agreed, but only if they could do it as Toast had teasingly suggested the other night… flirtatiously whispering in her ear that it was possible, though they've never gotten around to it, fingers and mouths and exploration feeling so good all on their own.

They parted, this time long enough for their bodies to burn for each other, relief bitter and recriminating, and they met again, bodies flipped, upside-down to each other, Furiosa tasting Capable and Capable tasting her, both of them giving, both of them receiving. Capable had a fine taste, sweet but not too sweet. The sweetness she shared with Toast, the bitterness was all her own, a spice that made Furiosa ravenous. Desperate to learn this new flavor. To have its scent. Perhaps to kiss Toast and see if she recognized it.

The unfaithful thought made Furiosa's guilt, always close to the surface, breach again. But it couldn't survive the onslaught of sweet taste, the satisfaction in Furiosa's loins she hoped desperately was mirrored in Capable. The song played on, a duet Furiosa learned better and better, stopping only when Furiosa's sex grew sore and Capable insisted on stopping before pleasure became pain.

They circled each other, graceless in their ebbing satisfaction, bumping against each other until they'd oriented themselves to each other, straightened out the sheets, found out again how to nestle together. Only then, in the still silence and the voluminous innocence of looking at Capable, could the guilt come swimming back.

"I shouldn't have done that," Furiosa said, not knowing if Capable was awake.

She was, of course. As concerned with Furiosa as Furiosa was with her. "I would never have done it if it hurt Toast, she's my sister—"

"I believe you," Furiosa promised. "It's not her, it's you. You lost Nux and you wanted someone else… I took advantage…"

"No. I lost Nux. I remember him and I'm at peace with his memory. Now I've been alone long enough. I want to feel _together_ again. Like I did with him. And like Toast does with you."

"I don't know how I feel with Toast."

"Yes, you do. If you touched her anything like you touched me… I'm glad I have you. I miss Nux, but I'm glad I have you. And I'm glad to share you, so all of my sisters can feel as loved as you make me."

Furiosa started. " _All_ of your sisters?"

Capable snuggled closer, until Furiosa could feel her smile against her neck. "You can get to know Cheedo better soon. Tomorrow night, if you want."


	4. Chapter 4

The War Boys were working out well. Respected her to begin with, too sick to learn to hate her to the tunes of the Doog Warrior, revived by the medicine the Vuvalini had brought. She didn't think they were ever going to be quite right in the head, get out the ideas of being witnessed and shiny, but they respected the hierarchy and were impressed with the Many Mothers' age, seeing them as desperately experienced soldiers, amazed they had been chrome enough to kill so many warriors, even if the warriors were on their side. And Furiosa didn't have the heart to purge them. Seemed too much like something Joe would do.

Probably get her killed one day. It could wait in line with two dozen other things. But for now, it'd worked out. They'd gone off to Warlord Bix in the East, a dozen of her best men under the command of Sister Eleanor. Gave away some oil they didn't need, gotten some salvage. Her War Boys had good eyes. Looked at the wrecked carcasses of eighteen-wheelers, garbage trucks, tractors, whatever those were, and saw the beginnings of a War Rig. It was a good project for Furiosa. Less frustrating than a lot of things.

With the blackthumbs done sketching out how they would smash everything together to hold their tonnage, all that was left was a lot of welding. Late at night, Furiosa gave the others their sleep and kept at it herself. The Rig she'd crashed at the past had been the third one in her time, others fallen to Buzzards and Scorps. She enjoyed working on them, building them. Gave her a touch with them, maybe why the one she'd done up as Imperator hadn't failed her until that one last rune when she'd sacrificed it like she would anything else.

Worth it. Had to be.

Her torch went out. Furiosa turned, blinding goggles ripped away from her eyes, bad-arm ready to bludgeon in attack, but it was only Cheedo, turning off the gas from the acetylene tank. Furiosa finished the job, killing the deceptively soft glow on her burner in a bucket of urine. Bad idea to have much hot in the Citadel, where it was just warm enough for the real hot to catch, become a fire that could gut the place, show you what heat really meant.

And especially around Cheedo. She was growing up fast, as they all had, her girlish beauty becoming something more mature, understated. Her unfettered hair was now, in worship of Capable, braided into a single black plait that touched her shoulder blades. Her eyes were lined with dark kohl, her lips made purple—dyes from the new plants. But she still had that kind of innocence that made Furiosa want to protect, men like Joe want to use. Open flames, sharp edges, loaded guns, they didn't seem to belong around her. Furiosa didn't want them near.

"Cheedo," Furiosa said, not sure what acknowledgment she should give. Still unsure of this world where she meant so much to so many. Where all of them had deemed her worthy of love, not just one foolish girl. Where there was even more she had to do to keep them safe.

Cheedo held up an earthenware bowl—something Max's farmer had made. "The first harvest," she explained.

They were red. Not the red of the sun or of blood, that angry red, but something vibrant. It reminded her of Capable's hair. Angharad's lips. The color itself was something soft with the essence of the girls. She reached out and touched one, in its strange skin. Didn't seem to be red through and through, but her fingernail scraped the surface and there was, underneath, a kind of meat. It looked unspeakably tender.

But her oily hands had marked the red, turned its sheen to black. Furiosa snatched her hands back, as if she could pull back the stain as well, but it lingered there.

"It's okay," Cheedo said, setting the bowl down, picking up one of the things of red. She took a knife from her belt—the girls all had belts now, all with weapon and tools, so _useful_ —and cut away a segment from the red like she was removing a part from an engine block. She took the segment, red on one side, pale on the other, and offered it to Furiosa. "It's called an apple."

The Citadel's crops had had fruit before, but only Joe and his kin and his most prized things had eaten them like this. Furiosa had seen them in his quarters a few times when summoned; only been able to guess at them being some kind of artwork. For the rest of the Citadel—the War Boys, the Wretches, the Pups—the fruit was added with cores and rinds to the oats and grains, everything crushed into dust, added to water, made into a kind of sludge with nothing wasted. Furiosa had eaten it. She'd believed others when they said that man-flesh tasted better, even if Joe forbid it. It was no wonder most preferred mother's milk.

The new operation, with some knowledgeable recruits from the Wretches, with some refugees, with those Max had saved, had given them cereals, bread. Those had been fine. This was sex.

Cheedo gently pushing it between Furiosa's lips, timid still—she didn't fear Furiosa, but she was afraid for her, and would've been frightened if it were someone else doing something as intimate for her as she was doing for Furiosa.

Furiosa bit down, uncertain, but trusting in Cheedo. The fruit, firm but soft between her teeth, sweetly resisting, relenting as she applied pressure. A _crunch_ that was still somehow soft and then—Furiosa couldn't help a moan—the flavor! A tang like tasting her own blood when she'd been hit in the mouth, but cleaner, sweeter, nothing of pain or misfortune. It tasted so good, Furiosa thought everything else she'd ever eaten must've hurt, just a little, and she'd not noticed.

Cheedo smiled, seeing the uncommon enjoyment on Furiosa's face, the hapless and misplaced grin over the lingering taste. She wiped a little sheen of wetness from Furiosa's lower lip without thinking, and took her fingers back from Furiosa's face—staying near her chin, as if she had another slice of apple to feed her.

"Have you tried it?" Furiosa asked. She felt like _giggling,_ and that she'd almost forgotten.

Cheedo shook her head. "They're for you."

"Try one."

Cheedo took the apple in one hand, her knife in the other, but Furiosa put the cool metal of her bad-arm over Cheedo's knife hand. Cheedo returned the knife to her belt, raised the apple to her mouth, and used her teeth alone to carve a segment out of the apple's flesh. Furiosa saw the taste hit Cheedo, saw it written all over her face, and imagined that wild expression on her own face. Hair shorn, eyes darked, nose wiggling as she kept _tasting_ something. She bit her lip to keep from giggling.

Then, quickly, Cheedo sat upon the driver's seat in the open skeleton of the developing rig. Her body suddenly perpendicular to Furiosa's. Furiosa hung back, getting a rag to wipe her hands clean.

"I know the others have been with you," Cheedo said. "Capable and I think Toast too. Not that Toast would deny it, but I haven't asked and she's not the type to just make talk. At least, I don't listen. It seems… _different._ "

"Scary?"

Cheedo gave a small nod. "Not really scary… we've seen really scary… but like…" Cheedo's face contorted with strain, like she needed to force an explanation out. "We've all wanted you. All agreed that there's no one else, that we're going to take care of you. And you're very… you're very… I don't think anyone else could make me want this like you do. But I can't…"

"You don't have to," Furiosa said, quick only measured.

"I know. We waited a long time for you to choose one of us—thought you knew how much you meant—and when we saw Capable after and she was so happy, happier than we've ever been with each other… I should want this, I should want to be happy…"

"You don't have to," Furiosa said again. "That's the only thing that's important.

Again, the contortion of trying to explain. "I do want to. I think about it—I thought about it lying against your body, how it would feel to be with you, to really be _yours_ like Toast is, or Capable…"

"That's not what makes them mine. If they even are mine… I feel like I'm as much theirs as anything else."

"That's what I want!" Cheedo cried. "And I want you to be mine, even a little bit, I just can't… right now I can't do that again. Even though you're nothing like him and it would be nothing like that and… and…"

Furiosa held out her hand, silently asking if it was alright for her to touch, and Cheedo pushed forward, rubbing her head kittenishly into Furiosa's palm, smearing herself with the remnants of the grease on Furiosa's fingers. She came closer, leaving her seat, and Furiosa pulled her into an embrace. Cheedo sniffling as she felt the warmth of Furiosa's body and denied it.

"I'm going to make another bed," Furiosa said, "in another room. I can go there if I want to be alone, or if someone wants to be alone with me, or you can go there if you want to be there. But either way, you're always be part of this."

Cheedo nodded against Furiosa's body. "Imperator?"

Furiosa grinned despite herself, at Cheedo's sudden stilted formality. "Yes?"

"Could you kiss me? Just that? I'd like to know what it's like… with you."

Furiosa showed her. She hoped it was like the apple—that you could take a bite and just leave it at that.

After Cheedo left, the taste remained. To make Furiosa wonder how could there be such goodness left in the world. What she'd do to defend it.


End file.
